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Well, I spent much of the weekend reading (when I wasn’t picking strawberries on our bucolic and incredibly scenic CSA Farm, that is). I finished Bowling Avenue, and I finished rereading Sense and Sensibility; I’m also reading two fairly new “serious” history books: Ann Blair’s excellent Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age and Susan Matt’s Homesickness: An American History. And yes, I will confess that I feel like a complete nerd as I take notes on post-its and stick them into Blair’s book, which contains an entire chapter on the history of note-taking. Ah well, I am sure I am in good company!

A full review of Bowling Avenue is coming soon – the short version: I liked it very much, after a slow start. But I’m afraid that today, as I sit in my non-air conditioned house with my feet in a bucket of cold water, all I can think about is winter. So, in the absence of real air-conditioning, I give you the photographic kind (all photos taken by me in Madison in January):

This is the Little Free Library I peruse most often: it’s right outside the Willy Street Co-op on the east side of the isthmus in Madison. The little library box-on-a-stick is the typical model: less fancy than the two-story fancy one in my last LFL post.

When I checked this one out, on May 15, to be exact, it contained quite a variety of reading material. Not surprising at all, considering the fact that it’s located in one of Madison’s more eccentric neighborhoods (local trends include Tibetan prayer flags, front-yard veggie gardens, and hanging your baby swing from your front porch so you can sit and chat with your neighbors while your baby sails out over the flowerbeds). What was surprising was the fact that this Little Free Library has a blisteringly fast turnover. I walk past it at least once a day, and every day the selection is different. The books I found in it on May 15 had all been replaced within a few days. Does the C0-op replenish them (there is also a “take-a-book, leave-a-book” shelf inside the Co-op store), or is it all passersby?